Mercury News editorial: Water conservation needed now

Share this:

Beach goers walk near the lagoon of the San Lorenzo River, where it stops at the Santa Cruz main beach in Santa Cruz, Saturday, Jan. 11, 2014. The ongoing drought is impacting sensitive populations of Chinook and coho salmon. In Santa Cruz, there are reports that endangered coho salmon are trapped in the lagoon of the San Lorenzo River, and fishermen are catching them. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

Gov. Jerry Brown’s state-of-emergency declaration of a drought was important for legal reasons, since it makes water transfers easier. But it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

It’s time to get serious about water conservation.

California rainfall is at its lowest level in recorded history. “We are in an unprecedented, very serious situation,” Brown said Friday.

And there is no end in sight. As the Mercury News’ Paul Rogers recently reported, a massive high-pressure system has been parked offshore for more than a year, diverting storms from the West Coast. The National Weather Service predicts no relief in the next three months. By then, what we once knew quaintly as “the rainy season” will be almost over.

Dried lawns around town show that some people have gotten the message. But in case you’ve still got the sprinklers running: Turn them off. Today. Shorten those showers. Quit washing your car, and tell the kids to stop playing in the sink.

The more water we conserve now, the longer current supplies will last. And if the drought lasts long enough to turn an emergency into a disaster, at least we will be learning to live with less.

This long Martin Luther King Day weekend is an ideal time to start on some bigger water-saving projects: Do you have a low-flow toilet yet? A high-efficiency washer? Could you replace your lawn, or at least part of it, with drought tolerant plants, or install a greywater irrigation system?

Using less water isn’t hard. It just requires a change in mind set. There are plenty of reminders around us: the hills that never turned green this year, the news of wildfires and extreme fire danger in what’s usually the safe mid-winter.

Most of us live in what amounts to a coastal desert. Nearly all our water comes from someplace else. Learning to use less of it now can only help in what’s likely to be a less green future, water-wise, for the Bay Area.